Despite aligning his project with businesses tied to two of the National Hockey League’s most influential owners, the Canadian entrepreneur trying to build a 20,000-seat arena in a suburb north of Toronto is steadfast in claiming the possibility of an NHL team is not a motivating factor behind his proposal.

Graeme Roustan has received preliminary support for a $325-million arena in Markham, Ont., and recently announced a pair of corporate partnerships — one with a business tied to Jeremy Jacobs, who owns the Boston Bruins and chairs the NHL’s board of governors; the other owned by Ed Snider, who owns the Philadelphia Flyers and has a seat on the NHL board’s executive committee.

“From a timing point of view, they’re getting more media coverage right now than they have in the previous three years,” Roustan said Thursday. “So from a timing point of view, it’s purely coincidental.”

Jacobs and Snider are viewed among the hardliners in the NHL’s two-week-old lockout of the players. Roustan, who recently stepped down from his role as chairman of Bauer Performance Sports Ltd., said the partnerships are partially a function of his experience dealing in the hockey world.

“If I was a concert promoter, all of my relationships most likely would be in the concert and event promotion business,” he said. “I happen to have spent the last five or 10 years in the hockey world, so most of the people that I know are from that industry.”

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Jacobs is chairman and chief executive of Delaware North Companies, which bills itself as “one of the world’s leading hospitality and food service companies,” generating more than US$2.5-billion in revenue a year. Delaware North has been added in an unspecified capacity with the Markham arena project, known as the GTA Centre.

Snider is chairman of Comcast-Spectacor, and a subsidiary, Global Spectrum, has been enlisted as an adviser for planning the arena in Markham. If the building is approved by city council, Global Spectrum will manage and operate it.

Roustan, his construction partners and city leaders are scheduled to meet with Markham residents in the first of three information sessions next Thursday. Roustan is hoping to have a shovel in the ground by spring, and have the arena operational by the end of 2014.

“Ninety-five per cent of the feedback we get is positive,” he said. “There is 5% of the feedback which is … negative. I’m there to listen to both, obviously. But I’m there to pick the minds of the 95% who have terrific ideas that we’re incorporating into our building.”

Roustan has been at pains to say the arena’s viability does not depend on the arrival of an NHL franchise. He has repeated the notion it could survive on concerts and other events, serving as both an overflow and a separate option for acts eyeing the Air Canada Centre, which is home to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

At least two Markham councillors have claimed local representatives have met with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, though. One of them, regional councillor Joe Li, told the National Post in April: “Spending that kind of money just for culture and entertainment? Come on. We won’t even break even.”

And Roustan’s connections to the NHL, and through the hockey world, seem to run deep. Roustan has already written a letter to Hockey Canada to express interest in hosting the world junior championship in 2015, for example. Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson serves on Bauer’s board of directors.

Roustan has also added a former high-ranking Montreal Canadiens executive to lead the business operations wing of the Markham arena proposal. Ray Lalonde had worked as a marketing executive with the Canadiens.

Roustan, who is from Montreal, said the moves have been borne more of familiarity than of an attempt to woo an NHL team.

(A site has been selected for the arena, and a proposal was submitted earlier this year, but it still has to pass through Markham council before a shovel can finally hit the ground.)

“Now, had I been in a process to acquire a car company, perhaps the person I would have met — who would have impressed me from an executive level — would have been in the auto industry,” Roustan said, explaining his choice of Lalonde. “So that’s why.”

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